


Waiting for the End

by joyce



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joyce/pseuds/joyce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>None of the Avengers are where they'd planned to be, and they've all saved each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting for the End

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics are from Linkin Park's "Waiting For the End", a song about just that.
> 
> Marked "teen and up" because of cussing; otherwise, this is genny mcgen.

_All I want to do is trade this life for something new._

That’s not what Steve had wanted, though it was what he’d gotten. Things had been going all right in his life (or as all right as they could, considering). He’d had a date, for pete’s sake, and he’d thought he could save the world from anything, and then…

The long dark ice bath came, and he’d traded his life for something new, whether he wanted to or not. When he was trying to have a good day, he told himself that he was lucky to have lived – he could have died in the ice. When he was having a bad day, he wished he had died, instead of living into this world that he was having a hell of a time making sense of.

He didn’t like to think about it. Irritated at himself, he cleared his throat so the doc would notice him. There were days when Steve thought Loki could stroll into the lab and Bruce wouldn’t notice. 

“Oh, hi.” Bruce looked a little confused (which he often did), and turned around from whatever it was he was working on (electronics were not Steve’s thing). The doc’s face wrinkled a bit, as he tried to parse what Steve was doing in the lab. It was a rare sight; mostly Steve stuck to the gym, or the library, or his apartment (glued to a computer) as he caught up on decades of history.

“What is that… music, that you’re listening to?”

“Eh? Oh… a band named Linkin Park. Er… what decade are you up to when it comes to music in your history lessons?”

“1950s. Jazz.”

“Oh. We should work on that. Um, late 2000, Linkin Park released an album that was nu-metal-“

“New… metal?” Steve said, as if he was tasting an unfamiliar verb in another language.

“Yup, and rap. And stuff. But these days, they kind of just… do whatever they want to do. Which is why I like them.” Bruce flashed that rare smile that had everyone in the building melting when it did appear.

“This doesn’t sound like… metal? Thor was listening to something called Metallica and something else called Godsmack the other day, and he said those bands were… metal.” Thor had discovered Tony’s media collection, and had been torturing anyone who came near his apartment ever since. The last Steve had seen either of them had been that afternoon. Tony had been ordering JARVIS to delete someone called Miley Cyrus (“Why do I even have Miley Cyrus on that server? Don’t answer that.”) while Thor begged JARVIS not to.

“No, this isn’t metal. Like I said, they kind of do what they want these days. This is from a concept album that dealt mostly with nuclear war.”  
Bruce could see Steve storing away that information, and it was kind of scary to watch. The man was a sponge, and he was well on his way to becoming a walking encyclopedia.

“Right. Nuclear war. That is kind of appropriate around here. Thanks for the music lesson.” Steve turned around to leave.

“Steve? Not that I mind the visit, but… did you come down here for a reason?”

“Oh. Yea, dinner’s at 8:00. Family dinner night, and you weren’t answering the intercom, or your text messages, or emails, so… Tony dispatched me down here. I think I was disturbing his cooking and he just needed an excuse to get rid of me.”

Bruce grinned again. “Right. Tell Tony I’ll be there.”

Steve stalked out of the lab – not intentionally, but Steve just sort of stalked everywhere; it was in the shoulders. Bruce knew Steve was headed back to his apartment to find Linkin Park on Wikipedia.

_The hardest part of ending is starting again._

Bruce felt like his life had ended, that The Other Guy had taken his life and stomped it into a million pieces… pun intended, some days (when he was really feeling sorry for himself).

And then he had been figuring his life out, when Natasha had come and ganked him into this… mess? Disaster? Situation? Team? The word he used depended on the day and his mood, but when he felt like being honest with himself (and some days he did feel like it and some days he didn’t), talking to himself at his work bench, he knew he hadn’t been starting again in India. He’d been hiding. The day that Natasha had come to get him, he had started living again, like it or not.

And most days, these days, he found himself liking it, especially on days when Tony cooked.

_I know what it takes to move on.  
I know how it feels to lie._

Natasha knew both. When you offered a second chance (and that’s what Clint had offered her), you took it and moved on. She certainly knew how to lie. She was glad to be doing a little less of that, these days, though her change in working and life circumstances both were a little weird. Working with a … crew? Gang? Posse of insane people? Was different than just working for SHIELD had been, and living with them all… that was something else, too. It did make it easier to assemble, but it made it more of a pain in the ass to get away from everyone else when she needed to. Fortunately, Tony hadn’t seemed to notice when she turned a spare closet on the tenth floor into a workout room (or maybe he had – those plans of Stark Towers had been awfully easy to access on the network drive) and that’s where she hid when she needed to (which, she had to admit, was less and less over time).

“Natasha?”

She paused, in the middle of doing something terrible to a punching bag. “JARVIS?”

“It is now 7:30. You asked for a reminder…”

“About family dinner, because if I show up to the table sweaty and disgusting again, Tony’s going to kill me. Thanks, JARVIS.”

“Anytime.”

_What was left when that fire was gone  
I thought it felt right but that right was wrong._

The doctors all said that Clint was perfectly fine – that however Loki had gotten into his head, it was gone, and that he should be feeling just peachy now (not that SHIELD's doctors used phrases like "just peachy"). And most days, he did feel fine. But some days, he could swear there was an echo of… something, running around in there. He could be imagining it; he wasn’t sure. Since Clint focused on being unimaginative and solid and dependable and a good agent, he mostly ignored the echo, and he just hoped it’d go away. Natasha had saved him from Loki… hadn't she?

He pushed that aside. He’d saved Natasha, and she’d saved him, and he knew that was right, no matter what else was or wasn’t.

Clint stretched, made a face at the screen, and got up to make himself a drink. His eyes were crossing from staring at briefing documents, and he was thinking that maybe Natasha had it right after all – beat herself up in that closet that she thought no one knew about, and then cram the briefing documents on the jet. “I wanted to ship you all out tonight,” Fury had said, in the video call, “But Stark insisted that tonight was… family dinner?”

“Yup.” Clint had said flatly. Why use three words when one would do?

Fury had looked puzzled, and Clint finally told him “I know it’s weird, but this is why we work, boss.”

“I expect so. Be ready to roll out first thing in the morning.”

_Holding on to what I haven’t got._

Tony always felt like he was holding on to what he hadn’t got. Some days, that was okay – he was Tony fucking Stark, after all, and why the hell shouldn’t he hang on to everything and then some? But then some days, especially the nights when he lay in bed staring at Pepper, unable to sleep for the nightmares and wondered when the other shoe was going to drop…

He knew there wasn’t any point in thinking like that, but he couldn’t help it. In the meantime, though, he could make things as good as possible here and now – because if there was one thing Tony Stark was good at, it was here and now.

“JARVIS? Check this evening’s dinner menu against all known food allergies for the Avengers.”

“Yes, sir.”

_Fist flying up in the air, like I’m holding onto something that’s invisible there._

Thor missed Asgard, much as he loved Earth and the people on it. He missed his Jane, who was busy with work much of the time, and still wasn’t entirely sure what she thought about a life with a mythic being from another plane of existence – flirting when he’d been mortal had been one thing, but… she wasn’t sold on anything else, yet. He missed his brother, before Loki went nuts. He missed his old life, and while he was able to go back to Asgard, and while he was good at playing the happy go lucky, good natured, ridiculously strong uber-being here on Earth, he felt stuck in between Asgard and Earth. He felt like there was something hanging up there in the sky, just away from him, that he could grab if he just reached high enough. But he never quite managed it.

The small device in his pocket vibrated at him. He pawed at the touch screen with his big fingers. “Thor?”

“JARVIS?”

“It’s 7:45. You asked for a reminder for when it was time to go back inside and clean up for dinner.”

“Thank you, JARVIS.”

_All caught up in the eye of the storm_  
 _And trying to figure out what it's like moving on_  
 _And I don't even know what kind of things I've said_  
 _My mouth kept moving and my mind went dead_  
 _So, picking up the pieces, now where to begin?_  
 _The hardest part of ending is starting again_

Tony felt like they were in the eye of the storm – things had been remarkably quiet (too quiet) since Loki and New York, and everything. Fury occasionally came up with errands for them, like this fool’s trip tomorrow – something that would take them a couple hours, just retrieving some documents; they’d be home in time for movie night. Even with the errands, he felt like they were all holding their breaths until the next big horrible thing happened. Tony was afraid they didn’t get to move on; he was pretty sure that was what the nightmares were about.

“This smells amazing, Tony. What’d you cook?” Natasha lifted a lid and gave the contents a good sniff. She was in a remarkably good mood – she must have been beating up on stuff in that exercise closet again. Tony made a mental note to figure out a way to ask if she needed anything, equipment wise, without letting her know he knew about her hideaway.

“That is paneer tikka masala, and there’s naan in the oven..."

“You crazy man, you made your own naan?”

“Why not?”

“I smell chicken biryani and I haven’t had that since… well, it’s been a long time.” Bruce had slipped into the kitchen when Natasha wasn’t looking – _maybe he was so quiet when he wasn’t the Hulk to compensate?_ Natasha thought, followed by _Well, that’s hardly original on my part._

“Tony, my good man!” Thor clapped Tony on the shoulder. Bruce tried to figure out where the hell he’d come from – how could someone so big be so quiet? “It is so nice for you to make dinner for us. I hope that you have appropriately assigned dish duty!” Thor boomed.

“Dish duty? That’s what robots are for,” Tony scoffed.

Meantime, Steve and Clint had appeared and were setting the table, and once they were all seated – “Everyone have a beer? Or a cider? Thor, why do you drink the girly drinks?” “Why do you call them the girly drinks? I find the cider tasty, don’t you?” – and eating, Tony thought to himself that this might be the eye of the storm, but at least they could rest here until things got bad again.


End file.
